God “gives us all things to enjoy” I Tim. 6:17, and then He asks us to give them back to Him: “If anyone wants to come after Me, He must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” Luke 9:23. We want the first and ignore the second. Are you still at the “enjoy” stage? Can you call yourself a follower of Jesus if you are?

“Things” seem to have become the Christian drug of choice.

You can’t love stuff and people at the same time.

What you do is really what you believe.

It is easier to be offended than to admit failure and change.

A woman’s heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man has to seek Him first to get to her.

The most important thing about a person is their eternal destiny; all else is irrelevant.

When I am dead and gone, my boys will find a pint tin can full of lacquer thinner containing about 100 spray-can nozzles in it. And they will wonder what that was all about, another of dad’s crazy collections? Well, it could be but actually they are there for good reason.

How many times have you been spraying away with a spray can and the tip clogs? You fiddle and fuss and you just can’t get it to work. You use small drill bits to dig out paint from the bottom side and blow it out with an air nozzle, but with no success. Now what do you do? Throw the can way? No, you go to that can that has the little nozzles in it and pull out a matching one and keep spraying.

I have been saving these tips for a long time and dig in there about once every year for a matching tip. But that one time is worth the little effort it takes to keep the tips fresh, ready for use.

Now if the can clogs inside, well I’m not sure what you can do. I have tried a lot of things and none of them work. This just happened to me with a can that was about half full. I banged on it, removed the tip and pushed the little round tube a bunch of times, but with no success. So being one not to waste anything, I punched a hole in the top of the can to release the pressure. I then poured the paint into a can. If fizzed and fizzed vigorously, releasing the super duper fast drying solvent that was put in the paint to make the paint to dry quick. I thought I would hasten the process and put a stick in to stir it. Huge mistake. I guess the room temperature heat of the stick was enough for the paint to instantly boil over the side of the can all over my bench. Lesson learned.

Now I have a small can of gloss white un-spray paint to use when it’s needed. Which will probably be never. Because spraying always puts on a better finish than brushing. But I feel better not being wasteful. I’ll leave those feelings to my sons.

In thinking about it now, if the can clogs, you could probably take the tip off and use an air nozzle on the little tube, push down at the same time releasing air from the nozzle to push the crud back down past the valve. If you try this and the nozzle sticks open and the can empties itself all over you, your workbench and garage floor, I didn’t give you this trick. Actually I just did this with a can of spray oil that had lost all it’s propellant. Re-pressurized the can with the air nozzle and it worked great! Another save!

Is your faith strong enough to cut off your options? Is it faith if you don’t?

Looking leads to fascination.
Fascination leads to fixation.
Fixation leads to obsession.
Obsession leads to addiction.
Be very careful what you look at.

We smile at the child who chants, “I want a Happy Meal! I want a Happy Meal!” But we’re the same way about things, and when we get them, the “Happy” never satisfies for long. Our garages are full of “Happy Meals”.

Contentment is the inner freedom of not wanting more.

Your happiness and comfort are not God’s primary concern. It may even be way down on His list of priorities for you.

No amount of things will bring contentment.

God may not give us enough for tomorrow but He always gives us enough for today.

“One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.” (John Piper) The Lord God has often lost out when competing with the gods of entertainment for our time and attention.

[A friend was showing a picture of a home in India where all the furniture was facing an idol. He then realized that] every seat in our room was carefully positioned to face the 50″ flat screen on my mantel….I’m not anti-entertainment, I’m just wondering if we’ve gone from watching it to worshiping it.

The average American watches more than 4-1/2 hours of TV every day.

What does your family spend the most time doing together?

Our own false gods tend to be invisible to us; I can probably see yours, but I’ll miss detecting my own. Here’s a clue: discover what the chairs of your heart are aligned around. Around what does everything orbit in your life? What are the locked in dates on your calendar, the essential items in your budget?

We seek amusement because we don’t want to think.

[my note: it’s interesting that the word “muser” from the old French means “stare stupidly”. Yep, we got that part right….]

Are there earthly goals that you just have to achieve before you die and go to heaven? Then you are telling God that the things of earth are better and more important that what He has prepared for you in heaven.

Impatience is always an expression of entitlement.

If you think you have enough wisdom and resources to manage your life, you are delusional.

The only competition a husband and wife should be in is to out-serve each other.

Dissatisfaction is one of the most destructive emotions we can have.

It’s sad that it usually takes becoming poor yourself to finally show compassion to the poor.

“Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and mind and soul and strength
to serve the King of kings.”

A.W. Tozer wrote

“What we think about when we are free to think about what we will – that is what we are or will soon become.”

How many of us are caught up with “lesser things”? I know I deal with this. I get so caught up (either on purpose or by default) with stuff that just doesn’t matter, has no bearing on anything eternal. I waste time on frivolous thoughts and activities. YouTube, for example, is a brain sucker and time waster. Hours of it, no matter how educational (that’s what you watch on YouTube, right?) is still a waste of time, a lesser thing, a non-essential to the Kingdom thing. I don’t do Facebook, but I understand that it is exhibit A of lesser things, where lesser things are the main thing.

Here are some questions on “lesser things” that hopefully will be thought provoking for you:

– Is the amount of time you think about (and spend time and money on) your hobbies, shopping and sports truly really wisely spent or are they in the category of “lesser things”?

– Are the good things you are dedicated to just not really so important, in the eternal view of things? Are they something Jesus would recommend for you to think about, to do, along these lines: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things”?

– Are your idle thoughts about most everything else except Jesus? When your thoughts wander, do they go to the incredible God you serve, and the inscrutable Mercy He has shown you, and to His abundant undeserved Grace? Are we taken up with Jesus, His person, His love and the sacrifice He made for our salvation? Do we think about our sin and how we need to repent and be living Holy lives for a Holy God? Or do your thoughts wander to the inane, inconsequential, often profane, non-eternal things?

– When you wake up in the morning, are your first thoughts not worthy of One Who’s sins have been forgiven by the precious Blood of Jesus?

– Have you really given your all to serve God or are you serving yourself?

– What does your credit card statements reflect about your priorities: are they lesser things or the greater things of God?

– Are the books and magazines you read part of the world’s system, designed to lure you away from God, or are the words that cross your eyes uplifting you, causing you to hunger and thirst for righteousness?

– Does your browser history show that you are dedicated to righteousness or folly?

– Are the text messages you send uplifting, pointing others to God as the Source of all wisdom and knowledge and power or are they about the inane and frivolous and trite, “lesser things”?

– God said you are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.” With what goes on in your heart, soul, body and mind, have you really given all to Jesus?

– With our hands raised and eyes closed, we sing, “All to Jesus, I surrender, all to Him I freely give.” Really? Or was that just a bald face lie in the face of God to impress others and make us feel like we are dedicated believers and followers of Jesus?

– Are we in the church today pursuing the lesser things of buildings, calendars, status, numbers and image management? Are we pursuing the furthering of the Kingdom of God, in our time and budgets, giving “heart and mind and soul and strength to serve the King of kings”, or are we pursuing our own little kingdom?

For if we truly sang, “Rise up, O men of God! Have done with lesser things” and took Tozer seriously, with sincerity in our most private inward being, in spirit and in truth, then our lives would look a lot different than they do today. Most of what we think is important would fall away, and only Jesus and the things of God would become important.

We would pursue upward thoughts, be passionate for God’s Word. Our first thoughts in the morning and our last thoughts at night would be thoughts of God. We would seek out those who have like minds, so we can think God-thoughts together. Our gatherings would be God-centered, prayer-centered, Scripture-centered, and not for our comfort and “felt needs”. We would become dedicated to the most important ideas and things in life, the things that God wants us to think, and we would become an oddity to our friends and neighbors, because we would no longer think, look or speak like them. We would be dedicated to the eternal issues of life, to the things that transcend our short time here. We would become sober-minded, not caught up with the latest fad, the latest styles, the latest personality. We would become people who “live on purpose”, instead of living haphazardly, or living vicariously through others. We would live as if eternity matters, and our mantra would be “the world has nothing to offer”.

Is that what we see in the Christian culture today or are we caught up with the inconsequential, lesser things? Is that what you see in your life?

May we truly be done with lesser things, and with all our being, embrace the most important things. We will find that life will finally have meaning, and we will have the satisfaction that our lives are a part of something God-ordained, something bigger than ourselves, something lasting, something eternal.